Archive for September, 2010

Staying Put

admin September 23rd, 2010

I wrote this piece in 2006, and it is interesting for me to revisit it now, after our flirtation with moving. In the end we stayed for all the reasons I write about here – I think I hit on something true, but I don’t know if I really understood how hard it is to simply accept the limitations of one place until I actually did it.  Yeah, I know, physician, heal thyself ;-) .

It really doesn’t matter what you believe is the central crisis of our present society, whether you are focused on economic instability, peak oil, climate change, poverty and inequity or all of them together. When you filter out the details and get down to brass tacks, the answers to all of the above problems are the same.

Go home. Stay there. Cook your dinner instead of getting it out. Donate what you save. Talk to your neighbors. Buy local. Grow your own. Go to your town meeting, neighborhood council, or other public forum, and try and improve things. Vote.  Show up.  Make things instead of buying them. Share. Help those in need in your own neighborhood. Walk instead of driving. Play with you kids instead of buying them stuff. Turn down the heat and put on a sweater. Chase your kids or play soccer with your neighbors instead of going to the gym. Talk instead of watching tv. Plant trees. Learn permaculture. Barter. Raise some money for a good cause. Pare down. Live simply. Garden. Go home. Stay there.

Now the first and the last clauses here represent something of a problem for a lot of Americans – because you cannot build community, or develop a local society, or have an orchard, or depend on others for the things that you need, unless you actually stop moving around and stay somewhere. And most of us are not very good at that last – the average American moves every 5 years.

That’s not enough time to pay off the mortgage, or see that standard apple tree grow to fruition, or get to know the local issues well enough to have an impact on your town. In five years, you can get a carpool together, and get some bartering going, but you’ll have to leave just as things get good. It gives you just enough time to begin acquiring that wonderful quality, “known-ness” in which you know your neighbors, and you understand how they are connected to other people (that the postman is the BIL of the woman in the third house down, and that the woman in the green house is worried about her mother, whose health is failing), and how you fit in (you are the weird one who composts and has chickens, right?). 

Then, most likely, you move – for the best of reasons – because this was a starter house and you need something bigger, or to get closer to your dream house, or to build your own passive solar place, to be closer to your elderly parents, or so the kids can walk to school, to be nearer a new job or in a safer neighborhood, or to downsize now that the kids are gone. And you start again with a new garden, and new soil, new trees and new neighbors, new friends for the kids and new everything.

Now I have a lot of natural sympathy for people who move a lot. I would be one of them, but I can’t be. My husband, Eric, feels about moving much the way I feel about toxic chemicals, only not so positively. If it were left to him, we would probably still be living in an apartment in Somerville. But now that he’s here, it has taken him the better part of nine years to get used to being here, and he’s happy, so he’s never, ever moving. Add to that that this is the house we lived in with his beloved grandparents, and we’re here forever.

On the other hand, if three months have passed since we moved here that I haven’t looked over the local real estate listings, I’d be shocked. Me, I’m a grass-is-greener kind of person. I’ve never been anywhere that I didn’t think (however briefly) “could I live here?” And often, when I’m most frustrated with my life, my first reaction is “we should move to where we could be carfree/have more land/be nearer X relative/be further away from other people/have a smaller house/build green/etc…”

It has been a long, long struggle for me to realize that I am staying here forever, if possible. I still fight against that reality sometimes. I do love my house, but like many of the people I love, I’m not always sure that I actually want to live with it. If you were to describe the ideal post-peak house, I suspect you would not choose a 3000+ square foot rambly, under-insulated farmhouse with a bat collector (er, cupola space). It is a pain in the ass to keep clean (and we’re not the tidiest people in the world), drafty, too big even for our four kids (we had hoped Eric’s grandparents would be with us much longer), because of its size, the taxes run high, and has a host of other things that make it much more difficult and annoying to make efficient than would a new, green-built home. It doesn’t come with an ocean (I grew up near the sea, and that bugs me), and it is in every way imperfect, even when I like it.

And in that sense, it is perfect, isn’t it? Because I’m going to bet that most of you live in the wrong house too. And in fact, no matter how hard we try, we’re not going to replace our 90 million dwellings with brand new, perfectly designed ones. We can’t, and think of what we’d waste in doing so.

A few people will build new, green houses, but most of us will make do with what we’ve got, or, as most of us do, buy another house and another house, trying always to get to the point at which our house will fulfill its dream functions for us. But we never quite succeed. I once read that people who build their dream houses only live in them an average of 7 years. Because in 7 years, dreams change, I guess, and we get frustrated by the fact that houses, no matter how wonderful, are in the end, only houses, and go looking for the magic house that will be more.

And all that moving around exacts a price. First of all, there’s the economic price – the cost of realtors fees, and advertising, moving costs and buying new things at the other end – we lose an average of between 6 and 8% of the purchase price on each house. In a bubble market like the one we once had, that’s no big deal – we get it back. But that’s not the norm, and we all know those days are over. So moving costs us economically. 

It also sets us back on every goal we have in creating local economies, local communities, local cultures. Every time we pick up and move, we lose a year or two of high quality work – because while we’re adapting to a new place, meeting people, finding out about local resources, getting used the new job, seeing where the sun falls in the yard and testing the soil, we’re spending time that could be gardening and working at the shelter and bartering with the neighbors. It also costs energy – moving our crap, buying new stuff, flying on airplanes, renting trucks, these are not low energy input activities. They raise our personal energy footprint.

Now sometimes we’re going to have to move – and not every home has a future, particularly given climate change.. But over the coming decades, a lot more of us are
going to have to stay put. We are going to have to change to a foot economy, and relocalize.

 You cannot fully relocalize if you are dreaming of the day you will move to your perfect house, that you will find the perfect community of people just like you. We can’t wait until we can all afford the perfect place. And some, perhaps many, of the places we’re in are going to have to become perfect because they are ours. With the crash of the housing market, it isn’t going to be economically feasible to trade up all the time. No matter how good your R value, the building materials in your perfect house come with a big energy footprint. No matter how annoying your neighbors, maybe it is time to share with them, rather than dreaming of the perfect community. Even if the house is too small, or too big, doesn’t have the garden space you dream of or is down the street from weird people, it might be the best place for you.

So I’m trying. When we invest in our house, we do it in ways that will serve us for a lifetime. Last night I looked out at the stars and I tried to imagine that this, with its benefits and limitations, is our permanent world, the place where we will always live. The only home my children will know. We are renovating the house to make ourselves more self-sufficient, and to set things up so that we can live comfortably without electricity or other fossil fuel inputs. I am trying to make it more beautiful, to pare down what we don’t need, and to make things prettier. And I am trying to believe that here is where I am supposed to be.   I’m not always successful – but I’m trying.

Sharon

Independence Days Update: The Cusp of Autumn

admin September 17th, 2010

It won’t officially be fall for a few days,  but we had a night low of 37 degrees, the kids are wearing two layers early in the day and we shut the windows at night.  That’s fall, even if the dates are wrong.  Sometime between our departure and our return, autumn moved in to stay.  We’ll have warm days again, of course, but the change has come.

You never know when it will come these days – sometimes it is warm all fall, other times it gets cold early.  Our first frost has happened anywhere between September 19 and October 30 over the nine years we’ve been here, so you never know what to expect.  And that doesn’t count the basil frosts – you know, those light ones that just toast the basil.  We had one of those the last week in August once.

It is time to try and pull in all I can of summer, and the process keeps us busy – besides the five day diversion during which we ate all kinds of unsustainable things, increased our waste production and otherwise used resources in ways we don’t ordinarily, now we’ve got to come back and get into the groove again.  I’ve got literally piles of produce to attend to right now

I did come back with some wonderful plants that went into the ground yesterday – I took a workshop on propagating woodland medicinal plants.  While our medicinal herb production has mostly focused on wetland herbs, our 19 acres of woods already are home to a small amount of goldenseal and blue cohosh (but not enough that I’d ever harvest any for sale), but clearly can produce the conditions suitable to growing them.  The class, taught by an extension expert from North Carolina was brilliant, and she gave us all plant divisions to take home of Black Cohosh, goldenseal, bloodroot, mayapple and wild ginger. I have small amounts of black cohosh and wild ginger already, but I was excited to get some new planting stock.  It’ll be years before we attempt any serious harvest of these plants, and I’m not counting any chickens before they hatch, but it seems a good use of our land.

Before we left there was an unholy rush to get all the tomatoes processed – bazillions of them, roughly speaking.  They are ripening more slowly in the cooler temperatures now, but I’ll need to do some more.  Today I’m gathering in the pumpkins and bottle gourds as well, and clearing a bed to be made into a low hoophouse for lettuces, spinach and kale.   I’ve got zucchini to dry and cukes to pickle – the final rush.

We’ve been so comatose the last few days after the chronic sleep deprivation of the trip that things have been slow getting started – yesterday we dealt with the last of the sweet corn, and picked the raspberries that we waiting for us so patiently.  Today there’s jam to deal with, and peppers and…

This time of year is my favorite – it feels so lush and rich and the wealth of the harvest makes me happy.  At the same time, with school started up again for Eli and Eric and the busy season hitting before winter, and the wave of holidays, it feels like we go two months at a dead run – and long for the quiet of winter.  I guess it makes the transition easier!

Plant something: Black cohosh, goldenseal, mayapple, bloodroot, wild ginger, winter wheat, lettuce, arugula.

Harvest something: Pumpkins, gourds, squash, broccoli, kale, collards, dried beans, peppers, hot peppers, apples, carrots, beets, daikon, lettuce, tomatoes, eggplant, pea shoots, many herbs.

Preserve something: Made raspberry jam, made peach jam, dried zucchini, dried pumkin, dried apples, pickled green tomatoes, froze corn, froze lima beans.

Waste Not: We wasted a lot on our trip – there just wasn’t a good way to avoid it.  Sucked.

Want Not: Nothing special

Build community food systems: Gave a talk about why grow food in front of Thomas Jefferson’s Vegetable Garden!!!!

Eat the Food: Lots of corn chowder.

How about you?

Sharon

Independence, Interdependence and Disability

admin September 14th, 2010

From “These New Old Traditions” a lovely essay by BlueJay:

There is a theme that reverberates throughout the writings of DIY’ers, off-the-gridders, and the like—it’s the notion of independence. There is a sort of pioneer spirit that drives us to train our bodies and minds to be able to go it alone. Some take pride in leaving jobs where they were beholden to other co-workers and bosses and now “work for themselves.” Others build their own shelters, ditch cars for bikes or till their own soil.

In school, I am learning about how to work with those who are disabled. There is a tool in occupational therapy called “activity analysis.” In this exercise, the occupational therapist (OT) breaks down an activity into parts in order to see exactly what skills are required to successfully wash the dishes, for example. There are motor skills required for standing at the sink and lifting plates and cups. There are cognitive skills required for knowing how to order the stages of the task. There are sensory and perceptual skills required for balance and regulating water temperature. There may even be social skills required if you are washing dishes with someone else. If you are like me, then you wash the dishes many times a day, without much (conscious) thought to how you are employing all of these skills simultaneously.

 

But there are other activities I do that are more of a challenge. Sometimes, when I haul my bike up two narrow flights of stairs or hang the laundry from a line hooked to the ceiling in my apartment, I think about how hard my body is working to support my “independence.” Then there are the multi-step, far more complicated tasks I do, am learning to do, or want to learn to do such as canning fruit or earning a professional degree or building a cabin. I often take it for granted that my body will carry me through these tasks and that my mind will be flexible and receptive.

So much of what I need in order to achieve these goals is invisible to me. To ride my bike I need strong legs. To hang the laundry I need to be confident in my ability to balance on a step ladder. To earn the degree I need to get to school, I need to use the machine to buy a metro card, I need to sit in class for six hours a day, I need to take notes. I feel like I do a lot of these things on my own, but it’s not really true.

I think this is a really important point.  At one of the talks I gave in Charlottesville last week, a woman stood up and observed that what I was talking about doing sounded too hard for her, that she and her husband in their 60s just didn’t want to work that hard.  And my observation is that sometimes my work is hard – just as everyone sometimes has to work hard.  But what I like about my work is that there’s a place for everyone in it – when Eric’s grandparents lived with us, they certainly couldn’t chop wood or carry water – but they didn’t need to.  They could rock babies like nobody’s business, shell peas and keep me company while I tended the babies.  Meanwhile, I could help them with the things that were hard for them.  One would imagine that a woman with three children under 5 and two elders, one seriously failing, the other with probably the average limitations of someone in their 80s would be more work – but it was less, or perceptually less in  many ways than my working alone with no company but the children.

I hear all the time the idea that one doesn’t want to be dependent on other people – the idea is expressed in our society by the idea that we should all save a lot of money, invested in the stock market, to make us “independent” if we get old, or less than perfectly able bodied.  But of course, the stock market makes us dependent too – dependent on markets and governments and other people to invest where we have.  People talk about independence as emerging from their ability to pay people to help meet physical needs if they become old or disabled – imagining that an employer-employee/resident-caregiver relationship is inherently more equitable than a family dependency. 

But there is no escaping dependency in the greater scheme of things – we depend on systems that break down sometimes whether in our bodies or out in the world.  At times in every person’s life, unless you are one of those rare folks who drops dead in full health (but that has its downside too) we will depend on another – sometimes for short periods when we are temporarily ill or disabled, sometimes for whole lives or for long parts of one.  Coming to terms with the idea of mutual dependency may be as essential as learning to be independent of institutions we deplore.

I say this often.  Every one of us will be dependent at one or more times in our lives.  Every one of us will probably need to give and offer care, and also to learn to accept it.  Learning to come to terms with this is simply a part of our lives, a part of our human condition.  Embedding ourselves in systems of reciprocity, kindness and respect is the only possible answer – there is no escaping the reality of needing others.

Sharon

While I’m Gone…

admin September 6th, 2010

I’ve got to leave you with something fun to read. I’ll be in Virginia for several days – if you are anywhere near Monticello’s Heritage Harvest Festival this Saturday you should come by – it is going to be fabulous.. I’m going to be talking about how Jefferson’s idea of “A Nation of Farmers” can be lived today, and I’m giving a workshop on low-energy food preservation, complete with tastings. C’mon by and say hello! I’ll be the one following Patti Moreno around admiringly ;-) .

The family and I are making this an extended holiday (Rosh Hashana) trip with visits to family and friends on the way to Charlottesville, so I’ll be totally offline until next Monday. So I thought I’d leave you with some ideas for things to read.

First, if you are in the mood for scholarly, thoughtful and really fascinating, try this UN FAO publication in the history and present uses of grain ferments in African, Asian, Pacific and Latin American countries. Yum.

If you happen to run into the October issue of _Eating Well Magazine_, the last page has a hysterically funny essay by Rowan Jacobson about trying to violate every single one of Michael Pollan’s _Food Rules_ in a single day. Let’s just say that “Slim Jim” is pretty much your best friend if you ever want to try this endeavor. For that matter, if you picking up magazines, the latest issue of _Utne Reader_ has an excerpt from _A Nation of Farmers_ in it.

Raj Patel has a great piece on Mozambique’s Food Riots

Kathy Harrison has a fabulous recipe for Jardiniere – I’ve tried it, it is awesome!

The ever-fascinating Matron of Husbandry is mulling over what’s in her foodshed.

A visual exploration of urban agriculture in Anyang South Korea

Finally, folks, I’ve got two baby goats for sale - check it out and email for details at jewishfarmer@gmail.com!  I’ve also been working on adding material to the pages, but it is a slow process – still, take a look!

Have a great week folks!

Sharon

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